The Irrelevant Musings of an Actor

A collective gasp permeated throughout the audience. Eric Gilde, had just delivered another gut-wrenching, heart-dropping line which cut deep into the collective emotion of the viewers. Red Light Winter by Adam Rapp is not easy, it is not stomachable, it is not fun, it is, however beautiful.

A play set first in the red light district of Amsterdam and then in the East Village. The story follows two best friends (of sorts) who don't seem to have very much in common. Their personalities clash completely, in every way except for their brilliance. They both are brilliant literary minds, but where one is shy, reserved, depressed, and idolizes Henry Miller; the other is brash, offensive, and defends Raymond Carver. Their personalities offset and yet they are held together in their unity, in their defense of each other, in their love and simultaneous hatred of each other. In this light, Matt (Gilde and the shy one) is bought a gift by Davis (Jesse Bush, and the other). Davis buys Matt a prostitute, to help break his dry spell of three years. Christina (Erin Adair) brings with her a sense of guarded emotion, coupled with a shade of broken dreams and hope for a better future. In this light, the three set off on their journey together through single-scene acts with discussion ranging from literature, to music, to giardiasis, and everything in between.

So as I announced a couple of weeks back, I've been cast in Ithaca College's Main Stage production of Working by Stephen Schwartz and some others. I will be playing Frank Decker, Conrad Swibel, Charlie Blossom, and a few other characters as well. We've been in rehearsal for three weeks now, and things are going great! We ran Act 1 last night, and have probably 90% of the show blocked! I can't wait to get this thing on its feet, the design team has done an amazing job bringing these characters to life and I really think it's going to be a remarkable production. For tickets, you can visit www.ithacaevents.com or www.ithaca.edu/theatre. The show goes up the last week in March/first week in April and runs for two weekends with a day off on Monday. Tickets are going fast, so pick them up soon!

Hope all is well with everyone, this semester is flying right along and before I know it, I'll be gradumacating and trying to assemble myself in the real world!

Thanks for sticking by me to all who do, your support means more to me than you could possibly know!

It's so interesting watch the creation of "type" in this business. In terms of casting, my casting has been a bit skewed from my type due to my abilities as a Staged Combatant. I find myself getting cast a lot as a bruiser, because I can also choreograph the fight. Through those casting, my resume has pushed me in one direction that my acting style doesn't generally match, and what has been so interesting in the last year, has been to find the happy medium. As I've readapted my "type" I've found myself saying goodbye to things that I have been holding on to. For one, I less and less find myself being considered for the younger roles (Damn that Irish receding hairline) unless it's a charactery role, such as The25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and speaking of charactery...I find myself being considered in a charactery way. Between my work on How I Learned to Drive and many callbacks for The 39 Steps, I have found myself working to explore this side of my type but be careful not to eliminate the solid foundation that Ithaca has given me.

Then the honest questions begin. Do I like the type that I'm being made out to be, and if not, how can I change it? What do I need to do to be the person that I want people to see me as. Is there a way? It's hard to know, but it is something fun to explore. Rather than explore type in reverse, I'm finding myself being pulled towards a type that I don't always love, and am really enjoying exploring aspects of myself that I don't like, and could change to be more who I want to be. What I've found is as I become comfortable with these new adaptations of my traits, is that people have started to see me in new types? I've begun to morph between character types and my auditions, callbacks, and castings have been truer to me, and more honest towards what I would like to be seen as.

I'm not a person who believes too much in type. However directors know what they want, and so there will be predetermined "types" for every show that actors go into. What I've loved exploring, is how my type, and my actual personality slide together to to create the kind of person that I truly would like to be seen as.

I feel like an honest to god person striving to be a professional actor! Every time I've tried to apply for acting positions outside of the theatre world it's always "let me see your reel". Well there's an easy, inherent, catch-22 with that, how on earth do you get a reel if film work won't look at you?!

Problem solved. Thanks to Ithaca College film directors such as Joe Killeen, Dave Travers, Mark Renaudin, and Cory Tomascoff, I now have an Acting reel live and online. Thanks to directors such as Jack Denny, Charles Miller, Alex Tragellis, and Garrett Kafchinski, I have a Fight Direction reel live and online. As I prepare to graduate, I'm so thankful to these people (and the countless others who have helped me) for helping me take yet one more step forward toward my goal to live as an actor.

Head over to my Videos page to see the videos I speak of, plus an embedded playlist of musical performances I've had recorded.

This is officially the most awkward post I have ever had to do. As some of you know, I am a diehard New England sports fan, especially for the Patriots and Tom Brady. My housemate, John Gardner, is a huge New York sports fan, specifically for Eli Manning and the Giants. Obviously this caused a serious problem for our household. A wager was placed on the outcome of this past sunday's Super Bowl.

As you may know if you've looked at a newspaper or seen the news in the last couple of days, my team lost. Not badly, it was actually an amazing game of football. However, I still had to uphold my end of the wager. I would tell you all about it, but I think that ruins how epic this bet truly was. So without further ado, I give you the video of the destruction of my personal honor, and one of the most sickening experiences I've ever had to sit through.

I'm losing my faith in the educational system. Of course, right now, I am a senior in college at a small liberal arts college, with aspirations of one day going to get a master's degree, I am from the upper middle class, I am white, and I went to a small private school in Portland Maine. In other words, I am considered to be the stereotypical college aged kid, and I am following the system to a t, so therefore I don't really get the authority to criticize it since I am the poster child. Fine, I accept that. However I think my issue with the educational system has to do with everything I hear and understand about the schools that I did not attend. I have been fortunate, unbelievably fortunate in my experiences and opportunities in this world. However every step of the way, I look back at what I received, and then look at what those institutions are giving to the students arriving in my wake, and it is different. Very different. I could get into the specifics, but I love my current school and my old school and I have no interest in being critical of what I am sure were important, and difficult decisions which came from a place of much more experience than I have. Instead I'll talk about what I received, and what I see happening these days.

When I was in school, I was given a well-rounded, reason based, education which also focused on introducing kids to athletics, music, art, performance art, as well as various cultures, races, religions, creeds, and ideas. It's entire purpose was about a educationally hands on approach, while still allowing kids the space to utilize their knowledge to make their own discoveries and understandings about life. Instead of being lectured at, we were brought into conversation, and the teachers were skilled in leading conversations to outcomes they intended us to arrive at. What has changed? On the surface, nothing. However what brews under the surface is much more important. I was schooled in school, I took part in extra-curricular activities, and when I was at home I was away. What was important is that I was taught how to think, but rarely taught what to think.

I'm now taking a class at Ithaca College called "Social and Cultural Foundations of Education" and I find the class absolutely fascinating. It comes at education from an idealistic place, so that instead of allowing pure cynicism about the faults of the educational system, it uses the negative as opportunities to create more positives. Through the class, and different explorations of aspects of the educational system every week we hope to create a set of standards which school's could adapt to possibly better themselves. However, I'm having trouble believing in them.